A few of the Karen children we met along the way...

I feel as if I have this burden and I don't really know what to do about it, or how to deal with it...not just yet anyway.  My burden is this...that I want you, because you are reading this, to care about these children as much as I have learned to care about them.  I want you to worry with me; about their health, their education, their families and their future.  I want you to see them as your own children, or grand-children, or nieces and nephews, and see that they deserve so much more than what they currently endure.  I want you to empathize with the life they are living; in such poverty it is almost unimaginable to those of us with full bellies and full closets, with the freedom to go to school and to go to the store and to sleep peacefully every night. 

And yet, I am without adequate words to explain to you what it was like to meet these children; to hear them sing and laugh, and to hear them speak in a language I didn't understand but yet could easily comprehend with their smiles and giggles.

It was heart-warming and heart-wrenching all in the same breath.

These are a few of the Karen children we met, living in refugee camps and hide sites along the Salween River...